Picture Them Dead

by Brynn Bonner

  “Let me fix you something to eat,” Esme said, and my heart felt a tiny lilt at the prospect of them moving to the kitchen so Jack and I could get back to that thing he wanted to talk about. But that hope was squelched when Denny declined.

  “A cup of coffee would be nice, if you wouldn’t mind. This isn’t an official visit. I came by because I wanted to see you, Esme. But since I’m here, I’d like you to fill me in on what you saw this morning—just a few questions. I know Jennifer took your statements, but I’d rather hear it from you two. I need to hit the ground running if we’re going to clear this case quick. Unless I’m interrupting something here,” he said, sweeping a hand toward the pizza box.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Jack said, though I silently begged to differ. “I need to get going anyhow. I’ve got a job over in Greensboro tomorrow. Need to be on the site by eight a.m. sharp. I’d better get some shut-eye.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” I said, jumping up from the ottoman.

  I was still hoping we’d be able to pick back up on the conversation we’d started, but the moment had passed.

  “We’ll talk later,” he said, stopping to pull on his jacket. He gave me a brotherly peck on the cheek, which I enjoyed but also found woefully inadequate.

  As I watched him run through the rain to his truck, I was quite put out with Esme and Denny. All I’d wanted was a little more time for Jack to tell me what he wanted to talk about. They’d ruined it. Or saved me, delayed an inevitable heartbreak. Who knew?

  * * *

  My mind kept jumping from one thing to another as I drove to the Raleigh-Durham airport on Tuesday morning to pick up Dee Thompson, Marydale’s daughter. She was coming in early for the wedding so she could be a part of all the hubbub and was planning to stay a week afterward to help run Marydale’s paper-craft shop while Marydale and Winston were on their honeymoon. Dee is the closest thing I have to a sister. Our mothers had been the closest of friends and we’d grown up side by side. We still stay in constant contact, mostly through texts, emails, and phone calls. I was excited about a real visit.

  Denny’s few questions the night before had turned into an exhaustive exegesis of every detail we’d observed when we’d found the woman at River’s place. It was what made him a good cop, and I usually appreciated his thoroughness, but I hadn’t been in the mood. I knew it was unforgivably callous, but I’d been more concerned with Jack and the missed opportunity for a talk that might have resolved some of our issues.

  But now, in the clear light of day, I was thinking of the dead woman, the image of her ruined face ingrained in my mind. Who was she and why had she been at that place at that time? She hadn’t appeared to be carrying anything to leave as a tribute, but maybe she’d already left it by the fence. Was this somehow tied up with the Forgotten Man or was it simply a bizarre convergence of ill timing and bad luck? If the man who killed her was someone she knew, it probably hadn’t been planned. If it had, he would have come with a more efficient weapon than whatever he’d used to bludgeon her. And what had he used? A rock? I didn’t see any bloody rocks anywhere near her. And why did I assume the murderer was a man?

  A stray thought hit me like a bolt out of nowhere and I almost veered off I-40 into the breakdown lane. River had been highly annoyed by the people invading his property. What if he’d finally had enough? What if he’d snapped? What did I really know about River Jeffers? I knew he was a driven businessman and that underneath his laid-back, man-of-the-land persona, there was a wealthy man who could afford just about anything he wanted and was accustomed to having his way. It was clear that establishing himself on this land according to his vision was important to him. How important? I pushed the thought away. It was ridiculous. Though I’d known River only a short time, I trusted my own judgment and I was convinced he was a good guy. A principled guy. A compassionate guy. I’d sooner suspect Jennifer, which might not be so far-fetched, I mused, considering how protective of her father she was. Then I caught myself. I didn’t have the warm fuzzies for Jennifer, but she certainly wasn’t a murderer. What was wrong with me?

  I shook my head and tried to concentrate on something else. I hoped to get back to Morningside in time to go out to Cottonwood to talk with Lottie Walker again. She might be a little on the ornery side, but I had a feeling she was the key to finding out who the occupant of that glass casket was. I wanted to go without Esme, but I didn’t want to have to explain to her why I didn’t want her along, which was because she had no patience whatsoever with difficult people. Today was my chance, since she’d be tutoring kids at her church all afternoon. Kids were the exception to Esme’s irritability. She had all the patience in the world when it came to the wee ones.

  I’d spent two hours the previous evening poring over the copies of the records Esme and I had brought from the courthouse and the copy of the deed River had brought over yesterday afternoon. I hadn’t found anything useful for identifying the Forgotten Man, but I now knew quite a bit about the Harper family’s history in America.

  Whoever Lottie Walker was, it was unlikely that she was the natural child of Oren and Sadie Harper, but clearly she had some sort of relationship to them. Why else would they have left her everything they had in this world? My single goal for this afternoon was to find out what Lottie Walker’s birth name was. That would put me on a new trail. Anything else I found out I’d count as a bonus.

  * * *

  I managed to snag a prime spot in the parking deck right next to Terminal A and hustled inside so I’d be there to greet Dee. I joined the crowd at the bottom of the escalator and milled around, vying for a spot where I could see the top of the platform.

  I spotted Dee’s blond hair, styled in a new pixie cut, and called out to her as she descended. I’m not normally a big emoter, but Dee brings out the kid in me, and we were both squealing and hugging like teenage girls at a boy-band concert.

  “Is that your only bag?” I asked, eyeing her compact carry-on.

  “Yep, this is it,” she said.

  “Only you could pack enough for two weeks into that tiny bag,” I said.

  “I pack like the engineer I’ll soon be,” Dee said. “Everything has at least two functions and I can buy things here if need be. It’ll still be cheaper than paying to check a bag.”

  Dee had an undergraduate degree in economics and had worked a short stint in New York as a financial analyst before deciding she was on the wrong career path. She’d found she was more interested in her brother’s profession than her own. Brody was an architect, and the more he talked about his work, the more Dee became unsatisfied with hers. So she’d quit her job and gone to Chicago to get a degree in architectural engineering. She and Brody had plans to open a firm together in North Carolina once she graduated.

  “We have our Genealogy Club meeting tonight,” I told her once we were in the car. “You’ll have to come. We’ve put together a really cool scrapbook for Marydale and Winston. It’s beautiful, if I do say so myself. Lots of exotic papers, and I did all the calligraphy for it. All modesty aside, I do have a beautiful hand.”

  “You do,” Dee said, “all modesty way aside, but is it supposed to be a surprise? How did you get all the stuff without Mother knowing? She knows the inventory in that shop like it’s hardwired into her brain.”

  “Roxie ordered it all for me,” I said, “off the books.”

  Dee’s cousin Roxie came over from Chapel Hill every Thursday to keep the shop so Marydale could have a weekday off. She was a sweet gal, but a bit of a scatterbrain. When Marydale announced she was getting married Roxie had been floored and blurted out, “But you’re old,” before her brain could stop her tongue. She was never going to live it down.

  “Oh, Roxie,” Dee said. “Bless her heart. Yeah, I’d love to come to the club tonight. I want to see everyone, especially Jaaa-ack,” she said, reaching over to poke me in the ribs.

  I slapped her hand away,
concentrating on a lane switch. Dee was the only one I’d confided in about my feelings toward Jack. “I can’t take any teasing about that right now,” I warned her. “Not after last night.” I told her about our interrupted conversation.

  “Sophie, you’re torturing yourself,” she said. “You’ve lived in this in-between long enough. You need to just put it out there and see what happens.”

  “And what if he doesn’t feel the same way? Then it will be all awkward. I’m not sure we could ever get back to being just friends. It would be horrible.”

  “Well, you can’t go on like this forever, either,” Dee said, digging her sunglasses from her bag. “There’s got to be tension.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “I’ve got tension, anyway. I’m not sure anyone else is aware of the situation.”

  Dee gulped a laugh. “Everyone else is aware, Sophie, everyone in the club and probably half the town. You know how Morningside is. And speaking of which, what is all this drama over that grave? A glass coffin? That’s so creepy weird.”

  “And it just keeps getting weirder,” I said. “When’s the last time you talked to Marydale?”

  Dee frowned. “Must have been night before last. Why?”

  I told her about finding the body at River’s place.

  “Oh, my God, Sophreena, that must have been awful,” she said.

  I nodded. “On a scale of one to ten, it was about a seventeen,” I said.

  “Did you know her? Is it somebody from Morningside?”

  “No, no clue who it is.” I gave her a rundown on the facts, which didn’t take long. “No identifying marks except a rose tattoo, and that’s certainly not very unusual these days.”

  “A rose tattoo?” Dee asked.

  “Yeah, on the shoulder. Only a butterfly would be more of a cliché, right? But at least she went for a more distinctive color, her rose was yellow, not red.”

  “Soph, I think I know who it is!”

  seven

  I asked Denny to meet us at my house; I didn’t want to bring the taint of a murder investigation into the happy wedding kerfuffle at Marydale’s. He pulled up at the curb as Dee and I were getting out of my car. I was relieved to see that Jennifer wasn’t with him—I had enough stress in my life at the moment.

  All of us automatically gravitated toward the kitchen, the room with the coffeemaker. I set a pot to brew while Denny talked with Dee.

  “So you knew this woman?” Denny asked, pulling out his trusty notebook and clicking his ballpoint.

  “Maybe,” Dee answered. “I can’t be sure and I wouldn’t know her today if I met her on the street, but that tattoo, I can’t imagine there would be that many women her age with a yellow rose tattoo who would have some connection to that place.”

  “Her name?” Denny prompted.

  “Sherry. Sherry Burton. At least that was her name when I knew her. I don’t know if she ever married.”

  “And when and how did you know her?” Denny asked, which was a question I wanted an answer to as well. Dee and I had known mostly all the same people when we were growing up, and I didn’t remember anyone named Sherry Burton.

  “When I was in middle school. I didn’t know her well, but I met her a few times.”

  “I didn’t know her at all,” I said, and realized it came out like an accusation.

  Dee frowned. “I don’t think you ever met her. She was the granddaughter of the old woman who lived there, the one who was like a hermit. I’ve forgotten her name.”

  “Lottie Walker,” I said.

  “Yeah, that sounds right.”

  “How did you meet Sherry and I didn’t?” I asked, setting steaming mugs of coffee on the table.

  “She came to stay with her grandmother for a couple of weeks in the summertime. She had a younger brother, too, but I don’t remember his name. Anyway, they came two or three summers in a row. It was always during the time you were visiting your grandmother in Missouri. I was looking for someone to hang out with while you were away, and Laney Easton had somehow met Sherry. I started hanging out with the two of them the first summer Sherry was here, but it didn’t last long. My mother put the kibosh on it quick-in-a-hurry. She thought Sherry was too wild. But Laney’s mother apparently didn’t get the memo because Laney hung out with Sherry the whole time she was here. They were thick as thieves.”

  “Laney Easton, the village councilwoman?” Denny asked.

  “The very same,” I said. “Hard to imagine, I know, but we were good buddies way back then. Laney outgrew us and joined the in-crowd by the time we got to high school, but we were the three amigos there for a while.”

  “Now she’s a power player,” Denny said. “Youngest ever on the village council, on boards and committees and I don’t know what all. So she’d know Sherry Burton?”

  Dee nodded. “She did back then, at least. That first summer, while I sat home totally bored and waiting for Sophreena to get back from Missouri, Laney and Sherry and a couple of boys we knew from school were into all kinds of mischief, sneaking out at night and going on adventures. She got that tattoo when she was here. I don’t know who she talked into giving it to her because she was clearly underage, but she managed it.”

  “And who were these boys?” Denny asked, scribbling in his notebook.

  “Gavin Taylor and Bryan Mason. I don’t know if Gavin still lives here or not, but I think Bryan is running the pro shop at the golf course. He was the last time I was home, anyway.”

  “He is,” I confirmed. “Gavin’s still here, too. He’s a mechanic at Joe Porter’s service station.”

  “Oh, I know Gavin,” Denny said, packing a lot of meaning into the words. “And do you have any idea where Sherry lived or anything else about her recent life?”

  “Not really,” Dee said. “I think she had a pretty bad home life growing up. It seemed like her mother brought her and her brother here just to dump them and they hated it here. The grandmother didn’t seem too thrilled about it either. She never did anything with them, as far as I could see.”

  Denny scribbled some more. “Okay, then, looks like the brother, assuming he’s still among the living, would be the next of kin, unless she was married. No wedding ring, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t,” he said.

  “I hope I haven’t given you a bum steer,” Dee said. “I mean, not that I hope it’s Sherry, or that I hope it’s anyone I know, or anyone at all. I mean, it’s terrible that someone was killed like that.” She looked over at me with a pleading look. “What do I mean, Sophie?”

  “You mean you need to get to your mother’s to prepare for one of life’s joyful moments and let Denny get back to the cop work,” I said.

  “Guess that’s my cue,” Denny said, stashing his notebook and handing over his empty mug. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  After we heard the front door close, Dee looked up at me, her eyes wide. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone personally who died like that—before their time, and violently. It’s really unsettling.”

  “All the more reason to get you to Marydale’s and involved in something happy. You are happy about this, aren’t you?”

  Dee pursed her lips. “I am. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few reservations. I know Winston is a good guy, but I’m nervous for my mom. She’s been on her own for a long time. This will be a big adjustment for her, and for Brody and me. But I know we’ll work it out.”

  “That’s what good families do,” I said, trying to bat down the green-eyed monster rearing his ugly head. I envied Dee. Families were everything to me professionally, but I have few blood relatives left, and those are distant relations living in faraway places. Thank goodness I had Esme.

  * * *

  This time the front desk attendants at Cottonwood hardly even looked up from their paperwork when I signed the visitor log.

 
I hurried back to Room 18 and pushed the door open a crack. “Miss Lottie, okay if I come in?” I called in a half whisper.

  “Come on in,” said a voice both frail and irked. “Not like I have a choice about who comes prancing through here all hours. Who are you? You that girl that brings the books? I done told you I don’t read no more. Bad eyes. Take your cart on to somebody who can still make out that tiny print. Don’t know why they have to make it so small anyhow.”

  All this before I’d even set foot in the room. I explained again who I was and for a moment she seemed to understand. “Yes, I recollect, you came before. You wanted me to tell you a story, didn’t you, little girl? Well, I don’t know any stories, and besides, I’m tired. You go on now, go outside and play.”

  I sighed. Miss Lottie may have been a sundowner, but she wasn’t too sharp at noon either.

  Just then there was a smart rap on the door and Miss Lottie yelled out a “Come in” that didn’t sound in the least welcoming.

  “It’s Carlos, Miss Lottie,” a young male attendant said. “You want to go down to the dining room today or should I bring you a tray?”

  “Tray,” Miss Lottie said. “And a root beer.”

  “I’ve told you we don’t have root beer,” Carlos said, “but I can bring you a soft drink. They have cola and lemon-lime and I think they’ve got orange soda, too. Does one of those sound good?”

  “Root beer or nothing,” Miss Lottie said, pursing her lips and turning away from him like a petulant child.

  Carlos gave me a wink and said, “Okay, then, I’ll be back with your tray in a few minutes.” He cupped his hand and whispered, “She’s usually a little more sociable after she eats.”

  He was right. When he brought the tray, he asked if I’d like to help her with it or if he should stay. I looked at the tray stocked with fruit gelatin, some kind of chopped meat in gravy on a piece of toast, a mound of mashed potatoes, a carton of milk, and a glass of water. Of course I wanted Carlos to stay and feed her, but I figured doing it myself might help me build a bond with her.